After the town incorporated in 1739, medical problems were handled by the Selectmen such as whether or not the town should have a building for “small pox set up by Inoculation” (or quarantine).

Did you know that a 1797 state statute set a provision for each town to appoint a “health committee”? Wareham waited until 1832 when town meeting voted to appoint nine members. Only eight members were appointed to the first health committee, Dr. Andrew Mackie, Dr. Perez Doggett, Sylvanus Bourne, Nathaniel Crocker, Isaac Pratt, Charles Ellis, Ezra Thompson and Warren Murdock.

The committee was formed basically because sailing vessels brought diseases to the town. The committee would force incoming vessels to stop at Long Beach for inspection before they were allowed to tie up at the wharf in the Wareham River.

While the early Selectmen were Overseers of the Poor, in the early 1800s, Dr. Peter Mackie, the town physician, was paid twenty-five dollars a year to doctor all the “paupers” in town. In late 1890, a house call by a Wareham physician in the village cost approximately one dollar. An office visit cost only fifty cents. Eventually an almshouse was set up to take care of the town’s needy, and a “Pest House” was created for the victims of small pox.